Pistol Primer "Hardness"

[mec]

Ever so often, someone will post a message including the information that CCI Primers are relatively tough and require a stronger firing pin impact and that Federal Primers are relatively soft and will go off with less impact.

Here lately it has become popular to deny that there are any hard/thick- soft/thin primers; say that they are all the same and frequently call the poster a ass a idiot for being so stupid.
Experienced reloaders who have had occasion to use different primers and handguns with marginal firing pin impact have long known that loads using CCI primers are more prone to soft impact failures to fire than the same loads using other primers. This is dedicated to those reloaders who are tired of being called idiots by...... idiots:

I started out with primed cases and an enclosed hammer .38 s&w "Owlhead"
that has a fairly moderate firing pin impact. It is totally ignition reliable with Peters factory loads. I primed three cases each with CCI small pistol primers and Federal Small Pistol primers. The dints on the CCI were markedly lighter than those on the federals and one of three of the CCIs failed to fire.

I then loaded up 15 each .357s using CCI and then Federal Primers. The GP100 I used has an adequate double action hammer fall and there were no misfires with either primer. The primers were seated on the same machinery during the same loading session. The firing pin signature and the overall flattening of the fired primers is quite a bit different with the two brands of primer.

 

[Coltdriver]

All you have to do is to measure the primer cup metal thickness with a mic.

It is absolutely the true that some are thicker than others. This contributes to how they react to the same firing pin.

I know for a fact that, regarding rifle primers, that CCI and Remington are thicker than Federals. Some fellows reloading .204 (including me) were having problems with Federals piercing at the upper limit of the .204 loadings. Another sage old reloader did some measuring and came up with the different thicknesses. I won't swear by this because my memory is not perfect but I think the Federals were about .021 and the CCI's were up in the .025 range as were the Remingtons.

Mic out the primers you have and tell us what you come up with.

 

[mec]

An expert on another board tore up some of his primers and posted his findings that CCIs were thinner than remingtons and that this somehow supported his original contention that all primer cups are the same.(!).....(?)

I will have to confess that I don't even OWN a micrometer. Nevertheless, I can see that the CCI and Federal primers behave quite differently. There are smaller dents in the CCIs and the Federals are more flattened after firing. I would be hard put to determine if this comes from a difference in thickness or a different alloy in the primer cup metal.

 

[Coltdriver]

Mec said:

An expert on another board tore up some of his primers and posted his findings that CCIs were thinner than remingtons and that this somehow supported his original contention that all primer cups are the same.(!).....(?)


I don't know how you got to that conclusion from my post.

Primer cups have different thicknesses. Simple enough.

It could be possible that a thinner cup could have a harder material.

But I do know that the thicker primer cups put an end to piercing at max loads with the .204.

 

[Ifishsum]

Here's an interesting link that supports some differences in primer cup thickness, although it pertains to rifle primers:

primers

 

[Cosmoline]

Interesting. I've noticed that CCI rifle primers seem to hold up a little better to the long, forceful smack of C&R rifle firing pins.

 

[mec]

"I don't know how you got to that conclusion from my post....."

I uh didn't. I was refering to another post from another poster (at least his contact information and location are different) on another board. What he said was:

He answers a previous post:"the cci's are the hardest to detonate"
With:

"They say 96% of things you read on the internet are myths....
This is one of them.

And it probably got started because of that jibberish of not putting X amount of primers in the lee auto prime...ive NEVER seen any publised data proving that one primer is softer than another."
Later on down the string, he chronicals disecting some primers and coming up with information I was referencing.

In fact, I thought your post on the matter was very erudite.

 

[Ol` Joe]

Personally I don`t know but here`s a artical from the American Rifleman...................
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3623/is_200307/ai_n9282387

 

[mec]

Yes. He wrote that article at least twice. Once in that magazine and once in another one.

 

[HSMITH]

Anyone that has played with very light DA revolver pulls knows the honest-to-goodness truth here, and that is standard CCI primers are much harder to ignite than standard Federals with Winchester standard in between the two. I don't know about other brands as I don't use them.

I had a Smith K-frame down to about 5.5# DA pull. It would fire Federal standard primers every time, but would not fire CCI primers at a rate of almost 30%. Winchester primers were not igniting at a rate of about 10%. Well DUH, it isn't hard to draw an accurate conclusion when you have actually done the testing, the CCI primer is harder to ignite and it NEEDS more energy from the firing pin. Federal SPM primers are about the same hardness as Winchester standard. Winchester SPM are harder than the standard and CCI SPM are harder than the standard CCI. Again, pretty simple to draw a conclusion here.

 

[Peter M. Eick]

Your results certainly bear out my experience. I use CCI's because they come in priming strips and work in my pro2000. It is pretty much the reason I chose CCI. They work well enough but yes, sometimes they will misfire in certain guns and federals (which my dealers carry) do not have the same issues.

 

[mec]

I think that, evident as it is to a lot of reloaders, it has become a worthwhile subject for discussion since it has become popular as a topic of denial and vehicle for flame wars.
I only regret that Coltdriver thinks I was refering to his post rather than a specific string on another site.

 

[45crittergitter]

Here's some miscellaneous info I have gleaned from various respected gunzine writers. This is not "internet stuff" nor is it my own experience.


Federal primers are considered to be slightly more sensitive than other brands, because Federal is the only company to use "basic" lead styphnate. Lead styphnate is the primary explosive agent in centerfire primers. There are two types: basic and normal. The difference between the two is in the chemistry, but basic lead styphnate has a finer grain structure and is, therefore, more sensitive or easy to ignite. All the other manufacturers use normal lead styphnate.

There are also differences among the various manufacturers in the chemistry of their primers and the construction of their cups and anvils. CCI pistol primers are generally assumed to have a slightly thicker cup. Federal primers use a thinner cup than CCI, Winchester and Remington, so Federals can ignite with a lighter blow.

Remington 7½ primers have a thick, soft cup (some say just harder) which makes them easier to light but also very tough. They should eliminate any problem from the cup flowing into the firing pin hole. Remington 7½ Benchrest primers have the thickest cup. The Federal 205M is equal to the Remington 7½.

Winchester primers are fairly hot. In standard rifle primers, Remington and CCI are normally mildest and Winchester the hottest, acting like a very hot standard primer or a mild magnum, with Federal 210 in the middle. Federal 215s have the reputation of being the hottest magnum rifle primers, but tests indicate that's not necessarily true anymore, with Winchester WLRM being noticeably hotter.

Most small pistol primers, standard and magnum, have a cup thickness of .015-.020" but each is annealed and hardened to different specifications. Standard Federal 100 and CCI 500 primers generally give good results with loads up to 35,000 psi, and have great sensitivity. Winchester Small Pistol Magnum and Remington 5½ will give good service against primer flow.

 

[Peter M. Eick]

Mec having gone and read the article listed above about the primers, I have to add that it does not match my experience. I would say there have been several articles written by this author that my experience would no match.

The problem is one of credibility. When an author makes statements that don't bear out my/our experience, what do you do? I for one naturally discount the author's "worth".

As an aside, I collect and save every web page on the forums that interests me for future reference. I figured the "error net" if the right Kalman filter is applied to all of the different posts, one can derive a lot of good information on it. I just checked my primers directory and I have 36 megabytes of web pages in it. This is over 265 different threads on it. If you total up my complete archive I have over 5 gigs worth of pages and around 40,000 different threads.

What does this matter except that Eick is exceptionally bored and has no life? Nothing other then if the Author had done the same homework and then "gut checked" his biases against the experiences of 10,000's of different folks on the web he might find that his conclusions were not borne out by others. If I were the Author, I might rethink my biases.

If say, the author wants to discuss something more esoteric like doing a trigger job on a Automag md180, how many of us have even seen one or own one and, let alone would know if he was right or wrong? There is just not the body of internet knowledge to be sure. This is the problem with tackling a topic that many have direct experience in and might have different conclusions based upon personal experience.

At several points in the article I was thinking "this guy is trying to tell me that fire is not hot!".

I hope my analogy was clear.

 

[mec]

"even seen one or own one and, let alone would know if he was right or wrong?"
I've figured and thought and wondered why he wrote that and this might be the best explaination. Maybe he figured "heck its $500 worth of column inches and whose to know?"

It was the last article of his I ever read. Problem is, I had read quite a number of his things in the past and was now stuck with a bunch of information of questionable value. Such as " If you are sorting your .45acp as to brand, you are wasting your time," and " Guide rods in .45 autos don't really accomplish anything." Such things really arn't important to me so, I never checked them out but I did manage to empty out my brain pan of a bunch of esoteric baggage leaving plenty of room for more of hopefully more carefully chosen provenance.

Interestingly though, the guy has some sterling credentials and is regarded as the formost authority by a lot of people.

 

[Peter M. Eick]

I agree completely!

I will comment that I did a psuedo test of mixed brass in either 45 or maybe 38 special, and over the chrono there was a big difference in 20 shot strings. It convinced me I was on the right track by sorting, regardless of what others thought. I attribute the difference to well differences in procedures, skill and guns and lets leave it at that. Do a search on it, I know I posted it here.

I will say that in my Baer 10mm, a full length guide rod stopped the spring wear on the tunnel and the gun seems to be smoother cylcing by hand. Does it matter? It does to me! I will keep the flgr in the Baer. It also seems to matter in the RZ 10mm I have but I don't have one on either of my PII Baer's so I guess it never bothered me enough to even try it.


Warning [rant mode on]

The crux of the orignal topic is that "in my not so humble opinion" that a lot of the "professional" gun-writers are not surfing the boards like many of us and do not keep track of who says what and how consistent the responses are from say 10 to 20 different boards over the last 5 to 10 years. This is the key. Recoginze this is a forum and everyone speaks, so you must sort out the nuggets from the waste rock. The best way I know is to monitor trends and themes over time and look for commonality of experiences.

Here you have a guy who as you put is a "foremost authority" making somewhat to very controversial statements. It would be different if you or I made these statements on the net where others could comment and offer opinions, but he wrote them and got it published. Had he kept up on the web pages he might have recognized that (assuming the following) his experimental results were "anomalous" compared to others posted prior experiences, he (might) have presented more of his results, facts or even posted his research on the web for us to review. This is how research and science advances, and reloading is a big science!


[rant mode off]

 

[mec]

One guy I know said that the same universe of true and untrue information lives in the print magazines and on the internet. You just get both a lot quicker on the internet. It's always important to have the BS detector turned up to the High position in either venue.
Maybe he wrote the primer thing because he's actually only used one type of primer for years and has gotten them free from one of themanufacturers. It does see far fetched though for a guy who writes learned columns about handloading and components to do that. It remains a curiosity but it's a Martha Steward GOOD THING that he wrote that article.
It reminds eveybody that they need the same BS detector when reading print articles by foremost authorities that they use on the internet.

 

[taliv]

yeah, cause we all know nobody ever made an error in say, a high school science textbook, or like, in the NYT.


I read that article this afternoon and responded with my opinion but then thought twice before hitting "Submit Reply". To be kind, I'll say there were several issues i had with the article. I think the author is a quack. He may be the foremost authority of some field, but it's not reloading.


As i've posted previously, when one of my SIGs was brand new, it would work flawlessly with some ammo, but with other factory brands it would consistently not set off the primer. It would consistently take two or three thumb-cockings and trigger pulls to set the primer off. That same factory ammo would run fine through other pistols.

As far as I'm concerned, that one incident was enough to settle the issue for me over whether some primers are "hard" and others "soft".

 

[Coltdriver]

Mec Said:

I only regret that Coltdriver thinks I was refering to his post rather than a specific string on another site.

No problem Mec! Our written correspondence on these forums lacks the cues of face to face communications. Mistake mine.

I do like being called erudite however even if I did have to look it up to see what that meant! Thanks!

 

[mec]

I like to send people to the dictionary because I'm such an internet *******. Glad you found my crayfish post there. I can see why you though the other one was casting asperigus on your earlier post. But you did a better job of measuring primer cups than the guy on the other board did. He was deeply involved in urinating from a great height on a guy who had said something reasonable about pistol primers.

Several boards have erupted with the primer flame wars lately which is what sent me out to gather the pictorial evidence.

 

[Smythe77]

I am only a h/gun shooter. Use DA all the time with my revolvers & with my PPC revolvers Federal is sort of a 'must' to myself & the rest at our club. In fact all of us have been using Federal for some yrs when shooting revolvers The few beginners shoot SA & so the heavier hammer drop will ignite any primers.

Now when I go to 9X19 or 45ACP the hammer fall of these semi-auto is heavy even on Custom made 45s & any make of primers can be used.

 

[Cosmoline]

Lee handloading has long insisted that their hand primers NOT be used with Federal primers. This is supposedly because Federals are either less thick or more sensitive.

 

[mec]

"Now when I go to 9X19 or 45ACP the hammer fall of these semi-auto is heavy even on Custom made 45s & any make of primers can be used."
__________________
That makes sense however a while back when Springfield Armory put those titanium firing pins in, I got one with a light hammer fall. The combination make such a light strike that it wasnt fully reliable with some factory loads. Winchestr LP sometimes, CCI lp -forget about it.